


Adventures of the Princientist & the Time-Traveling Paleontologist

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dinosaurs, Gen, Storytelling, Time Travel, female pronouns used for Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8364163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Once upon a time," he starts, "there was a princ—" He pauses mid-word as her smile fades, his words a cloud blocking out the sun. He scrambles internally, thinking of what he knows about her, and comes up with: "—ientist. The princientist had been born into a royal family but had ambitions of her own: the project she happened to be working on just then was a time machine, for a rescue mission."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenofspade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/gifts).



> Happy Trick-or-Treat, dhampyresa. Your letter gave me a bunch of ideas, and somehow we ended up here... I hope it gives you a smile or two, in any case!

The moment Shiro straightens up from tucking Katie in, there's a flurry of bedclothes coming undone as she sits up. "Story time, please." She smiles up at him even as the stretch of her leg pulls her into a slump as she reaches for the corner of sheets and blankets still tight against the mattress; with a soft grunt, she kicks them loose. 

Shiro grins back at her. "All right." He looks around and sees a chair that looks like it will accommodate his frame and weight, and goes over to bring it bedside. When he volunteered to babysit tonight, Professor Holt warned him about the tucking in ("She'll insist, and remonstrate you if it's not tight enough before she unleashes heck on it"), but didn't say anything about bedtime stories. Maybe that part was understood; anyone with babysitting experience would have seen it coming. 

Fortunately, there are shelves and shelves of books in Katie's room.

Unfortunately, the look she gives him when he asks which one she'd like him to read tells him the answer even before she says, "None of them." She waves vaguely around the room. "I know all these stories already." She's looking at him so expectantly, Shiro not only understands immediately that he's going to have to make one up, but he actually kind of _wants_ to; at the very least, he doesn't want to disappoint that glimmer in her gaze.

"All right." He sets the chair down and settles himself in it. "Once upon a time," he starts, meeting her gaze, flashing a grin as a smile dawns across her face, "there was a princ—" He pauses mid-word as her smile fades, his words a cloud blocking out the sun. He scrambles internally, thinking of what he knows about her, and comes up with: "—ientist."

Katie arches one eyebrow; Shiro can't feeling impressed that she's mastered the look at such a young age. "A princientist?"

"That's right." Shiro nods, committing to it. "Princientist Katie—" Her look darkens again and Shiro pauses once more, remembers the nickname her brother used before he left for the symposium on The Big Ice with their father, and recomposes: "Princientist Pidge." He watches her face closely; she's trying not to let her grin show but Shiro sees the hints of it anyhow. He keeps his own inside as he goes on, "Had been born into the royal family but had ambitions of her own. Ambitions matched by her thirst for knowledge and her inquisitive spirit." 

Immediately Shiro sees it's not going to be as easy as getting a name right: she looks off, lower lip pushed out as she directs her sigh upwards, her bangs shifting with the gust. "I hope there are going to be other characters," she says in a flat tone. "I have my own stories about myself."

Of course she does. But at least she's given him a hint. "Oh yes. In fact, the project she was working on just then was a time machine, for a rescue mission." 

Her expression is dubious as she turns to look at him, but she can't disguise the undertone of piqued interest. "A rescue mission?"

Shiro nods; he thought she was going to focus on the time machine, but now he latches onto the mission too. "She's been corresponding with a scientist from another realm—a paleontologist," he says, taking sudden inspiration from the myriad plastic dinosaurs that share the shelves with the books. "And he's gone missing. He was working on a time travel device as well. In fact, Pidge didn't start working on hers until after the paleontologist—"

"Shiro," Katie interrupts, and Shiro almost asks if she needs something, a glass of water or a trip to the bathroom, before he realizes she's named the paleontologist.

He grins. "When Shiro went missing, Pidge decided to build her own time machine and go looking for him. And it's a good thing, too—"

"Because Shiro was in trouble?" Katie ventures.

"Because Shiro was in big trouble," he agrees with a solemn nod. "His time machine worked, and it took him back to the Cretaceous Period. Can you imagine how excited he must have been when he stepped outside and saw living flora and fauna that hadn't existed for millions and millions of years?" Katie nods, her eyes perceptibly unfocusing as she imagines it.

She refocuses with the next words of the story, her eyes widening as Shiro goes on, "As he was crouched behind a tree observing some herbivorous dinosaurs, he realized too late that he had been followed by someone. Someone who had no good in store for him."

"It was Haggar," Katie supplies. "The Evil Witch and Mad Scientist Haggar." 

Shiro recognizes the name: one of Katie's teachers in the gifted program. He doesn't know the details but apparently they don't get along. He nods. "While Shiro was watching the dinosaurs, she was watching him, waiting for the right moment to sneak up on him and attack." Shiro doesn't know why the mad witch-scientist followed the paleontologist or was attacking him, and hopes he'll be able to come up with something if Katie asks.

Fortunately, her mistrust of anyone named Haggar, real or fictional, seems to be more than enough to carry her over any plot holes. The bedclothes bunch as her fingers tighten in them. "But he figured out she was there, right?"

"Only because she stepped on a twig hidden in the grass, and Shiro turned in time to duck her first attack." 

Katie nods, listening raptly as Shiro describes the battle, sitting up to mimic the paleontologist's moves as Shiro details the fight; the bedclothes, already disrupted, bear the brunt of each jab, cross, hook, and uppercut. 

The story is having the opposite of the desired effect, getting Katie worked up instead of winding her down, and Shiro draws the battle to a close: Haggar has both magic and science at her disposal and Shiro is overmatched, "even though he's a good fighter," Katie interjects. 

"Good enough to escape with his life," Shiro confirms. He leans in closer, confidentially. "But just barely. She took his time machine—and," a slight but dramatic pause, "his arm!"

Katie gasps; a pleased sound, not mirthful but perversely delighted, escapes from between the fingers she's clapped over her mouth. Shiro doesn't bother disguising his own grin. When they were playing with her action figures earlier this evening, the arm of one came off at the articulated shoulder joint. Shiro had offered to put it back in place but Katie had held the figure up to her face, examined it critically, and then smiled at it. "I like him like this." 

His gamble on the plot point having paid off, Shiro continues the story. "The paleontologist thought he was a goner when the arm came off, but then Haggar used her powers to cauterize the wound magically. Before he had a chance to wonder what she was planning for him, he heard a cacophony and turned in time to see three figures, far too large to be human, rushing towards them. And then everything went dark."

"He's not dead, though." Katie's brow furrows, lower lip protruding stubbornly as the corners of her mouth turn down, the top edge of the comforter flipping as she draws her hands out from under it to fold her arms across her chest.

"Of course not," Shiro assures her. "He only passed out." Katie relaxes visibly. "Some time later, he woke up to something wet. Not rain. It was too hot and rough for rain. The wetness swiped across his face and chest and arm again, and then again. Shiro opened his eyes: and saw the biggest tongue he'd ever seen coming right at him—and then that enormous tongue licked him again."

"A dinosaur tongue!" Katie chortles. "The three figures were dinosaurs!"

Shiro nods. "Haggar ran away when the dinosaurs showed up."

"With Shiro's arm and with the time machine?"

"Yes," Shiro confirms. "Fortunately the magic she put on his wound was holding, so he didn't think he was going to die." 

Katie's chest rises and falls with her sigh of relief, and Shiro can't help grinning. 

"Anyhow, the dinosaurs," Katie says, her gaze as expectant as her tone.

"The dinosaurs," Shiro says, almost as curious as Katie to see where this is going to go, "stepped back when he sat up, but they didn't leave. He sat there looking at them, and they stood there looking back. Even though they were, as Shiro had been able to tell before he lost consciousness, bigger than any human, they weren't huge. He thought they were young, probably not adults yet."

That doesn't seem too interesting to Katie, so Shiro tries another angle. "Even more interesting," he says, hoping it will be, "was that none of them were the same species as each other. One was a triceratops, another was a pterodactyl, and the other was an acrotholus." 

Katie's brow furrows, but not unhappily. "How did they get to be friends? Because they _were_ friends, right?"

"Oh yes." Shiro nods. "At least, it seemed that way to the paleontologist, as unusual as it was. He wondered the same thing you did and he wanted to ask them, but of course there was no way for them to answer even if they could understand him.

"Even without a common spoken language, they became friends with him. The acrotholus brought him plants with medical properties, to help heal the wounds from his battle with Haggar. The triceratops showed him which plants were edible and which to avoid. And the pterodactyl—who seemed to be very proud of his flying skills, and liked to show off and put on performances for the others—would sometimes invite Shiro to climb up on his back and take him up into the sky." 

Katie's eyes widen as she pictures it, soaring on the back of a pterodactyl; she claps her hands together once, applause of delight abbreviated by imagined thrill.

"It was scary at first," Shiro says, latching onto her response and going for a small embellishment, "because the pterodactyl was something of a daredevil. But he was also very responsible and was careful not to let anything bad happen, and Shiro forgot about being scared and just enjoyed the flights." 

Katie nods. "I would, too."

Shiro wants to tell her that some day she will; he's heard from Professor Holt that she harbors secret ambitions of going into space, but since she hasn't even told her father directly, it's far from Shiro's place to say anything. So instead he continues the story:

As the days passed, they all got closer. The dinosaurs couldn't say his name, of course, but the paleontologist gave them each a name and they learned to identify the sound of that name with themselves. 

Katie lights up. "He called the triceratops Hunk, the pterodactyl Lance, and the acrotholus is Keith!"

Shiro follows her gaze to the homemade habitat in the corner of the room where three rescued lab rats are curled up, sleeping in a pile. "That's right."

Paleontologist Shiro had been in the Cretaceous Period with Hunk, Lance, and Keith for a few weeks. He kept track of the days by making marks on one of the trees. The dinosaurs made marks too, and the paleontologist wondered if their marks held a meaning for them or if they were simply mimicking him; either way, he found their behavior charming and fascinating. "He liked them a lot, huh?" Katie said, and Shiro could only agree.

"Anyhow, Shiro was just marking the end of his third week there, when there was a commotion a mile or so off. The dinosaurs didn't seem to recognize the sounds. They looked at Shiro, and he felt like they wanted to know what he was going to do. Since none of them knew what the commotion was all about, Shiro decided he would go find out. So he started off in that direction—"

"And the dinosaurs went with him," Katie says decisively.

"They sure did! Shiro would have gone on his own, but he felt a lot better having them with him." He grins, and she does too. "The dinosaurs could go a lot faster than Shiro, of course. Sometimes when they went for walks, they would all walk along at Shiro's pace. Other times they would take turns giving him a ride. They were all pretty eager to find out what was going on, so this was one of the times they gave him a ride: Hunk knelt down and Shiro climbed up on his back, and they set off in the direction the crazy sounds and lights had come from.

"When they got there, they found a strange contraption sitting in a clearing—actually, it looked like the contraption had made the clearing when it landed. It was definitely strange to the dinosaurs, and it was even strange to Shiro. As he was trying to think what they should do, a seam appeared and a door opened, and who do you think stepped out?"

"Princientist Pidge! She got her time machine working!" Katie beams as proudly as if she'd built a working time machine herself. 

Shiro grins as he nods. "Paleontologist Shiro was so surprised and happy to see her—as happy as she was to see him. She jumped down from the ship and gave him a big hug.

"Then, even though she was still happy, she turned serious. 'I've figured out a way to track the evil witch and mad scientist Haggar,' Pidge told Shiro. 'She cannot be allowed to go traveling all through time, wherever and whenever she wants, doing whatever she wants.'" Katie nods in agreement, even as her fictional counterpart concludes, "'We have to stop her!'"

Princientist Pidge wasn't sure how they were going to defeat Haggar, and Paleontologist Shiro wasn't either—"'but,' he told her, 'we won't have to do it ourselves!' And he introduced her to Keith, Lance, and Hunk."

Full of practicality, Katie asks if the time machine was big enough for the dinosaurs, and Shiro tells her that, fortunately, it was. (Even more fortunately, Katie accepts it without pressing him on the matter.)

So the five of them set off on a journey through space and time, to stop Haggar. Along the way, Pidge used some of the spare parts she'd brought for the time machine to fashion a new arm for Shiro—eliciting a delighted and elongated, "Ohhh!" from Katie.

They had just discovered Haggar and were getting ready for the big confrontation battle—

When a rumbling comes: the garage door opening as Professor Holt's car pulls into the driveway.

Scootching all the way down, Katie pulls the covers up. "You can say you were just checking on me, that I went to bed hours ago..."

"Good night, Pidge," Shiro says without committing himself either to a lie or a betrayal, wondering only after the name has left his mouth if it's something only her brother is allowed to call her. 

She smiles, though, and says "G'night, Shiro."

He's in the doorway when her urgently whispered, "Wait!" makes him stop and turn. "You have to tell me what happens in the battle next time, okay?"

"Of course." 

"Promise?"

"Promise." Shiro traces a diagonal line across his heart, crosses it with another going the other way. He grins. "To be continued."

**Author's Note:**

> (Not actually to be continued, at least not on AO3 or in our world... Shiro will definitely honor his promise within this 'verse, though!)


End file.
